


inheritance

by hellebored



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Canon Backstory, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Parent Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29687940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellebored/pseuds/hellebored
Summary: To save her own life, a very young Tauriel finishes what her parents started.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14





	inheritance

A pile of orcs sprawl motionless at Naneth's feet, and the forest is silent.

One of the orcs begins to crawl. Tauriel watches it drag itself off into the bushes, and when it passes out of sight she creeps from her hiding-place and crosses to Nana's side.

Blood covers Nana's tunic and wells up under her freckled hands. Nana leans her head against the tree trunk at her back and meets Tauriel's eyes.

"My dagger," Nana says, nearly panting, and tilts her head toward where her weapon rests just out of reach.

Picking it up, Tauriel tries to press it into her mother's hand, but Nana squeezes Tauriel's fingers hard around the dagger's hilt. Nana's eyes are cold with a near-feverish determination, wide and piercing as a wild animal's in a trap.

"Itarille. You must find the last one, the one that crawled away. You must find it and kill it."

Tauriel has never killed anything more dangerous than a deer. She has practiced, training in archery with Ada and knives with Naneth, but she is too young to slay the sorts of fierce, merciless creatures that litter the ground around them now.

"I can't," Tauriel whispers, anxiously. Her slender hands tremble on the knife.

She doesn't want to take it. She wants Nana to get up from where she's leaning against the blood-smeared base of the tree. She wants them both to run. She wants to make herself small and utterly silent.

Nana coughs and tiny red dots fleck her lips.

"You _must_. If it escapes more will come." Nana raises her other hand to Tauriel's cheek, a caress that leaves a wet streak behind, and the steel in her voice softens. "I cannot do this for you, little one. Do you remember what Ada taught you? That even an injured stag can kill?" 

Tauriel tries to nod. The motion gets lost under a wave of trembling that makes her knees shake. 

"Do not forget it." Nana's hand drops from hers; she turns Tauriel around with a hand she barely seems able to lift from her lap, and pushes. "Itarille, _go_."

Tauriel goes.

She has no difficulty finding the bloody trail, oily and black, where the orc dragged itself into a low and narrow animal path through the thicket.

The only way forward means going on her hands and knees into a dark, muddy trap. She stares at the tunnel under the bushes until everything goes blurry with tears.

Her mother's voice echoes in her head. _You_ _must_. 

She crawls into the thicket.

There are tufts of fur on the worn-down branches, left by some larger creature routinely passing through: now the path is fouled with orc-blood and Tauriel wonders if any forest creature will come this way again.

Branches slap her shoulders and the back of her head. She thinks about the orc slithering on its belly somewhere in front of her. Of finding herself face-to-face with its greasy rank head and malice-filled eyes, hopelessly outpowered—she wonders if Nana would hear her screams—

Blood-slicked leaves sticking to her hands and knees, Tauriel bites back a sob. It would be better if Nana heard nothing, but the thought of dying alone, with no one left to hear or care, makes Tauriel shake so badly she can barely keep moving.

It's hard to say how much time passes before she hears the hiss of rapid, shallow breaths and brush shifting ahead. The air smells: rank as the blood on her clothing and hands, but more fetid. Like rotting meat and stale piss. 

Weak light filters down through the bushes. The trail widens, slightly, and as Tauriel shuffles forward the hissing breath gets louder until it's suddenly _there_ right in front of her: half-sprawled, half-propped against the tangled wall of brush, blocking the way forward.

Tauriel freezes rigidly in place as it turns its thick neck and stares at her with flat, unsurprised eyes. The orc tilts its head, eyes glinting in the dark. A wet rattling noise comes out when it breathes.

"Wondered what it was, following," the orc says in a strange gutteral way, and spits. "Sent their spawn to finish their work, eh? Too dead to come themselves? The she-elf bitch got me good, but I got her better."

Tauriel remembers the blood welling up between Nana's strong freckled fingers.

Nana is going to die.

Ada fell, and now Nana is going to die too, and this gloating, horrid monster is crusted in her mother's _blood._ Suddenly Tauriel's trembling changes its shape: it coils burning-hot under her skin and blisters her insides and she's moving forward before she has time to think, Nana's knife clutched in her hand—

Surrounded by its stench, pressed close to its filth-streaked mangled face, Tauriel has no time to react before it starts to _laugh_ , a horrible, gurgling sound. It laughs when its filthy broad hand lunges for her and clamps around her slender neck, squeezing, the sharp edges of its armored gloves slicing her jaw—

She stabs into the space between them, arm flailing wildly from the momentum of connecting with nothing. She can't breathe. There's no air, just hot rotten breath and malicious eyes and that _laugh_ and then she stabs again and hits something, something soft that gives way under the blade. 

The orc makes a pained grunt low in its chest but its grip doesn't loosen: she can barely see now, dark spots clouding her vision as the creature tightens its grip further. She draws the knife out and stabs again, and then again, and _again_ , and suddenly a hot spray coats her hand and splatters all the way up her arm and face and she tastes blood—

The orc drops her, scrabbling at its own neck. By the time Tauriel's vision clears, the blood-blackened creature is gurgling and jerking spasmodically as life pours out of its punctured throat.

Its sharp, malevolent eyes stay locked on hers in loathing while it chokes. Pulse pounding in her aching throat, Tauriel watches it die.

Then her stomach turns inside out, and she heaves its contents onto the bloody ground beside the orc's fetid body until there's nothing left in her but acid.

—

When she tumbles out into the clearing, some interminable time later, it is very quiet. No birdsong filters down from the trees; the branches are motionless in the stagnant air.

"Nana?" she calls, but in return there is only the silence, and her dread.

Somehow it feels harder to take the last few steps toward the tree where she'd left her mother than it had to crawl into the thicket, even knowing what was waiting at the other end. She'd faced it and she'd _won_. But _this_ — 

Her mother's eyes are closed, mouth slightly open, and there is no life in her.

"Nana," Tauriel begs, reaching desperately for Nana's slack, pale face. It lolls against her hand.

No life, no light. She presses her face against her mother's chest and weeps.

—

She finds Ada near a tree much closer to their home. 

His bow lies broken beneath him; one arm is beneath him, too, twisted back and under by the force of his fall, and it looks very wrong.

Perhaps a dozen orc-corpses lie within the tree's long shadow, but she barely glances at them as she stumbles forward. 

Ada is alive.

Sticking out of his chest is a black-fletched arrow that rises and falls as he struggles to breathe around it. His open eyes seem to see through her when she leans over him; he makes the same awful sound the orc had, a rattling, hollow noise.

When Tauriel drops down at his side and lifts his head onto her knees the sound stops, and for a dreadful moment she thinks she's killed him: but then his lips move, slightly, and the rasping seems less labored. 

"Nana is dead," she blurts out. A bitter taste floods her mouth, worse than bile, and she swallows painfully. "Help will come, Ada, _please_ —"

At the sound of her cracking voice Ada's gaze turns upwards. Something gentle settles over his pallid features: something warm and relieved and full of love, and his fixed eyes do not move again.

Tauriel stays with him until the King, towering and grave, kneels beside her and says _they are at peace_ and _it is time to go_.

∆

**Author's Note:**

> This has been in my drafts forever and I decided to poke at it today and finish it up. :)
> 
> iirc, [Itarille](https://www.elfdict.com/w/itarille) was one of the initial names writers considered for Tauriel in the movies - you can find gifs on tumblr of Lee Pace calling her that in early readings. 
> 
> It's a pretty name. I like the idea of it being her mother-given name and something Tauriel never uses or shares with anyone after her parents' death.
> 
> If you would like a) a glimpse of how random association in my brain works and b) something ridiculous as a palate cleanser, would it help or not help if I told you to go listen to [bushes of love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RySHDUU2juM)?


End file.
